(2 of 3)
Minimum Wage. A Catholic cannot be a Communist, but can he be a Socialist? Before answering this question last week Pius XI made clear his general position respecting Labor. He is for the minimum wage:
"The wage paid to the workingman must be sufficient for the support of himself and his family. . . . Intolerable and to be opposed with all our strength is the abuse whereby mothers of families, because of the insufficiency of the father's salary, are forced to engage in gainful occupations outside the domestic walls."
In the second place Pius XI is not only for private property but urged that each workman should acquire a "modest fortune" and that social steps should be taken to ensure this, as well as to stamp out unemployment, "a dreadful scourge.''
As to precisely what steps should be taken His Holiness examined and admitted the advantages of syndicalism, having evidently studied Fascist syndicalism, but concluded "there are some who fear that the State is substituting itself in the place of private initiative. ... It is feared that the new syndical and corporative institution possesses an excessively bureaucratic and political character."
To avoid these excesses, while retaining the admitted benefits of syndicalism, His Holiness appeared to favor a system of co-operation between Capital & Labor based upon local units, similar in scope to the medieval guilds. Syndicalism on a national scale he thought too great a concentration of "vehement power" (in such hands as Benito Mussolini's, not of course mentioned by name). A sufficient overseeing influence Pius XI discerned in "the blessing of God" and "the co-operation of all men of good will."
"Christian Socialism" Having thus clearly stated his own, advanced social views, the Supreme Pontiff was ready to answer the question whether a Catholic can be a Socialist. He did so thus: "This is a question which holds many minds in suspense; and many are the Catholics who, realizing clearly that Christian principles can never be either sacrificed or minimized, seem to be raising their eyes toward the Holy See, and earnestly beseeching us to decide whether or not . . . Socialism has retracted so far its false doctrines that it can now be accepted without the loss of any Christian principle, and be baptized into the Church.
"In our fatherly solicitude we desire to satisfy these petitions, and we pronounce as follows: Whether Socialism be considered as a doctrine, or as a historical fact, or as a movement, if it really remain Socialism, it cannot be brought into harmony with the dogmas of the Catholic Church, even after it has yielded to truth and justice in the points we have mentioned; the reason being that it conceives human society in a way utterly alien to Christian truth."